Good evening!
Welcome to your evening coffee! May our Heavenly Father help us to step outside ourselves, and create good listening habits. Father, it is so tempting to make conversations about us. Help us not to do that. Help us to be good listeners, first to you, and then to others! You call us to be active listeners, aware of ourselves as you see us, and allowing others to be heard and understood. This goes against our fallen nature Father, our sin-broken flesh. Please help us! In the powerful name of Jesus, and by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, please show us the lasting pleasure of being those who seek to understand others, instead of just being heard.
Your Morning Song: "
Your Morning Scripture: Proverbs 18:2
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his opinion.
...
I read this verse, and then thought of the "conversations" that happen in the various forms of social media. I don't use much of it, just Facebook, but I try to stay away from the comment section as if it were the plague.
There's something about keeping the words and leaving out the face to face part of a real conversation. We hide behind screens and "talk" to others in a way many of us never would if we actually with the other person.
I have never in my life seen so much condescension, so much disdain, so much arrogance, as in comments made on social media.
And certainly, I am disgusted by how I see others acting. But how different am I? I don't act like them, but I am just as capable of and just as tempted by these things. How satisfying it is to hide my face and lash out with my words! How empowering and thrilling it is to argue and divide and demean over anything I feel like talking about!
In our sin-broken flesh, we all long to express our opinions, our self-centered soul shouting down all others until the only voice we can hear is our own. This is foolishness. This is sin. This is death.
As God's Children, we should be marked by the world around us by how we appear to take real, actual pleasure in understanding others. Rather than longing to express our opinion, we are known as those who graciously make space for others to speak. The end of our conversations leave others feeling heard, loved, respected, really and truly listened to.
How are we doing at this? Some days good, some days not so good? That's fair. But the more often and more deeply we cultivate this habit of active, self-less listening, the greater our witness will be to others that Jesus Christ is so powerful that He can make humans selfless conversationists. That He can bring real empathy and a joy to understand even to social media.
Do you take pleasure in understanding others? That kind of joy will last within you, and spread to others.
Or do you find the fake, false, fading "joy" of listening only to your own voice?
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